import baseData from "lib/data/graphs/base";

# Introduction

**The Orbit Model is a framework for building high gravity communities.** A high gravity community is one that excels at attracting and retaining members by providing an outstanding member experience and increasing the bonds between members.

<img src="./slides/high_gravity.svg" />

Let's see how the Orbit Model is built up from this basic metaphor and
walk through the model's high-level concepts. These are:

- **Gravity**: the rate at which member involvement is changing; measured at the community level
- **Love**: the measure of an individual member's involvement based on their presence and involvement; measured at the individual member level
- **Reach**: the measure of a member's sphere of influence
- **Impact**: the outcomes that happen thanks to the operation of the community

## Gravity

In a solar system, everything resolves around the sun. In a community, members
revolve around a shared mission and set of values. As they orbit, they build a
network of relationships that helps the community accomplish its goals. The
mission, values, and connections act as forces to attract and retain members.

We call this force **gravity**. A community's gravity causes members to pull
themselves closer to the center. All members start on the outer rim, and some
become highly engaged members and orbit faster down at the center. These
movements determine each community's unique _field of gravity_.

In the Orbit Model, we find ways to measure gravity and observe how it changes
over time in response to various stimuli, particularly the work of community
builders.

### Gravity and growth

One of the central tensions in community building is how to grow the community
without losing its values and the sense of connection between people—without
losing its gravity. The wrong kind of growth decreases the impact and stickiness
of a community, and can lead to lower activity overall.

The Orbit Model provides a way to navigate this tension and take advantage of
the benefits of _both_ gravity and growth, without falling into the downsides of
an extreme on either side. The basic idea is that **gravity creates the
foundation for growth**.

The higher a community's gravity is, the more growth it is ready to take on. In
practice, this is because members who increase their commitment level are able
to meet, guide, and helper integrate new or less involved members.

A **high-gravity community** is able to move members
at each level of involvement up to the next level in an efficient and reliable way. A
**low-gravity community** struggles to integrate new members and help them reach
higher levels of involvement.

As a metric, gravity is a measure of how quickly member involvement is changing.

In the Orbit Model, each member has two characteristics that help us understand
the unique role they play and how to serve them best, increasing gravity as a result. These are **love** and **reach**.

## Love

Love is a measure of a member's involvement in the community. Love increases as
members make the journey from being new arrivals to regulars to leaders.
Communities need a certain number of high love members in order to help direct
people and resources toward the company's mission.

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  <FontAwesomeIcon icon="stairs" className="text-[150px]" />
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High love members are important, but so are members with every other amount of
love. Most communities need a balance between high, medium, and low love
members. Understanding the balance is necessary to using gravity as a tool for
planning growth, since it's best to add new, low-love members only when we have enough
medium and high love members to support and interact with them.

As a metric, love takes into account the commitment level and regularity of a
member's activities. Based on love, members are placed into **orbit levels**. A
member's level gives us a quick idea of where they orbit in our community's
field of gravity.

![](./field-of-gravity.jpg)

## Reach

Reach is a measure of a community member&apos;s sphere of influence and takes
into account their reputation, credibility, and degree of connectedness.
High-reach members know many other members in the community. Information is likely to flow
through them and their actions are likely to be influential, causing others to
follow.

We use networks and graphs to study reach. Each node in the graph is a member.
An edge exists between two members if they have a direct or indirect connection,
for example if they had a discussion on the community forum or attended the same
event.

<Graph data={baseData} />

As a metric, reach takes into account the number of connections a member has,
the strength and freshness of those connections, and how centrally their
individual web of connections places them within the network. A concept called
**clout** signifies external reach and looks at the member's influence outside the
community, and how they act as bridges between disparate groups of people.

## Impact

The impact of a community is the set of outcomes that happen thanks to the work
and operation of the community. When a business invests in community, the
community returns the investment by creating more revenue, leads, visitors,
partners, products, support, social impacts, and more.

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  <FontAwesomeIcon icon="solar-system" className="text-[108px]" />
  <FontAwesomeIcon
    icon="traffic-cone"
    flip="vertical"
    className="text-[108px]"
  />
</div>

In the Orbit Model, we describe each community-to-business process as a
**flywheel**, because the outputs of each step of the process feed back
in as input. For example, when happy customers become advocates, they draw in
more happy customers who become more advocates. As the wheel spins, the outputs
multiply. This helps explain the exponential impact that communities can
generate.
